April 29, 2013 - Soft Pretzels: Salted, Sugar Coated, and Cheese Covered

I was in the mood to make something other than a dessert tonight, so I paged through the book to see what I could make.  I found the recipe for Soft Pretzels, but I was a little skeptical since they are in the "Yeast Breads and Rolls" chapter and I had yet to make anything out of this chapter yet.  But this was a good place to start.

After reading through some of the other recipes in this chapter, I had noticed that most of them require hours and hours and hours of rising and resting and rising some more.  This one was nice because it only required about two hours total of rising time, which was perfect for the amount of time I had.

 

I mixed up the dough and let it knead in the mixer for about 6 minutes, then let it do its rising thing.  This was a great scenario because the recipe makes 12 pretzels, and there are three variations (salted, cheese covered, and sugar), so I decided I was going to knock out this recipe and all of it's variations at once.  After the dough finished rising I divided it up, rolled it out and shaped the pretzels.  Then they went into a blanching bath for a few seconds.

 

I topped four of the pretzels with salt, four with grated cheese, and the other four I kept plain.  Into the oven they went.  They came out with an awesome golden brown color.  The four left plain I coated with butter then sprinkled with vanilla sugar. 

 

Salted



Cheese Covered

Sugar Coated

These puppies turned out awesome.  They had the perfect texture of a soft pretzel and each version had its own really great flavor.  Definitely a recipe I will be making again sometime soon (maybe add some jalapenos next time to the cheese covered!).